


The Spring After Winter

by fallenfromthetop



Category: Star Trek, Star Trek : Into Darkness
Genre: A lot of them - Freeform, Angst, Double sided unrequited love, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Unrequited Love, cryogenic pods, ehhh, hope it's okay, it's a headcanon, it's going to be a little epic, like 73 of them, that i secretly like
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-09-02
Updated: 2015-09-02
Packaged: 2018-04-18 16:05:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,554
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4712057
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fallenfromthetop/pseuds/fallenfromthetop
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Khan has been forced inside a cryogenic pod for 50 years and he has been forgotten. But little did Starfleet know, he has always been observing in wait, thirsting for his revenge and planning his escape. He is willing to manipulate whoever dares to enter the cryogenic room through a supposedly benevolent A.I., Baines, to make them a willing asset to his breakout.  Brilliant and socially inept Dante, a young Starfleet scientist, has just tripped the trap. Dante has never loved, but he begins to feel attached to the gentle personality Khan is projecting out of Baines...</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Spring After Winter

**Author's Note:**

> I'm not expecting fanfare or anything of that sort, in fact, I am predicting a hit count of zero. I realize it is very odd and irritating to ship characters with an original character at times, it personally is also a bit of a pet peeve of mine, but I felt like this headcanon was interesting and logical enough to give it a try.
> 
> So to whoever has dared to clicked the title, thank you very much. I hope you enjoy the first chapter and please do express your thoughts in the comments box :) 
> 
> NOTE: Khan will appear to have some form of Matrix powers (it isn't canon) which will later be explained.

“Here.”

Aventa took a sharp left and maneuvered her PADD to an archaic interface by the dead end of the short passageway and pushed in a few keys into it. It took her a few tries before the door slid open jerkily, a screeching noise grating Dante’s ears. She badly hid an irritated look, tapping her foot edgily as the door slowly unlocked before muttering,

“Something we’ll fix…eventually.”

As soon as the door fully opened, the LED panels flickered on dimly and the muffled whirring of the electrical generator grew louder. A light waft of musty odor instigating from the records boxes next to the pods drifted around the large room leading Dante’s eyes to the seventy three cryogenic pods glowing a faint blue and humming in sync to the generator. He meandered around the boxes and brushed a hand gently across the glass of the closest cryogenic pod, the lack of condensation on top of the man’s angled face indicated a perfect insulation system. Dante briefly entertained the idea of one inch of transparent aluminum between him and the universe’s most intelligent.

His train of thought was quickly interrupted as Aventa joined him in the room. She gingerly avoided some of the wobblier mountains of records and flipped a few switches on the wall planted electrical box whilst impatiently commentating her actions,

“Blue is to activate non-essential room machinery, this striped one is for the NAD, the switches next to it is for the NAD leads. Yellow is the replicator. Red is emergency shutdown. The rest is Starfleet textbook, you don’t know it, too bad.”

After setting up a few more switches and buttons, she picked up the PADD and tapped in a quick report before briskly walking back to the entrance and stopping by the door, rapping her PADD querulously against the aged frame. Dante turned around to face her, meekly waiting to hear her final words.

“You know what you’re doing, right?”

He nodded feebly and she rolled her eyes, walking away back to the main building, the fading echoes of sharp clicks of her heels indicating her departure from the corridor. Dante breathed a sigh of relief and turned once again to the cryogenic pods. His hands once again, found themselves running around the smooth titanium structure. He couldn’t help but smile, as outdated the technology, it was still a marvel of creation. The air compressor pumping in liquid nitrogen to lower the body to negative one hundred and ninety six degrees Celsius paired anti-freeze glycerol pumped through the blood system alongside with other hypothermic preventions and body preservation procedures formed an invention once held in the highest regard. As long as there was Earth or nitrogen filled air, it was meant to last forever. It was the favorite of many societal elites wishing to cross space, until the beginning of the twenty second century when it became redundant. The beauty of the pods however, was never lost to Dante.

He sighed, the natural end to his thoughts sent a ripple of sadness, and pulled out PADD before he forgot his original mission. It was already 1350 hours, the unnecessary orientation about policies and scheduling he already knew about wasted plenty of precious time. It wasn’t his fault other new employees had little concern for the Starfleet comm space, so he shouldn’t have paid for it. Dante needed this more than anybody. He worked a hard twenty years to get where he was, albeit he being in an area resembling a twenty first century storage basement, stale and frigid with cluttered files everywhere.

After shifting record boxes he found were useless and had no real informative value outside to the corridor to enhance room space, he shut the room door for privacy and began familiarizing himself with the room. Dante soon realized the replicator wasn’t doing as its name advertised as one of its main transporter lacked a beam focuser explaining the poor excuse of a fettucine alfredo crisscrossing in glops across his meal bowl. He didn’t take it on himself to carry subspace equipment, so he decided a meal could be later replenished and moved on.

Dante walked towards the humming generator and as he suspected, found a twenty third century backup alternator, a miniaturized electromagnetic generator made solely to power the cryogenic pods. He inspected how the machine functioned through his PADD while contemplating the reason for the separate energy source. Dante came to conclude that these measures were due to the dangerous sociopathic tendencies of these genetically advanced beings. Should the London Starfleet Headquarters Electrical Services ever be breached, the cryogenic pods wouldn’t automatically open from impregnable failsafe programs that awakens the sleeper when there is a power loss. Logical, but definitely tedious to set up and maintain. 

Lastly, after some more general housekeeping and sorting through even more records, he sat down with his sleek HoloCom, a state-of-the-art splendor he bought for himself as a well done gift, and began running some log checks on the condition of the room. Dante grimaced at some reports, particularly the air ventilation which was operating at five percent efficiency and minimal filtering for air borne pathogens as nobody came by this room. He snatched out his Airfiliator sealing it across his face as he painstakingly recalled some engineering courses and adjusted the ventilator manually to permanently filter at ninety nine percent. As he had found himself particularly prone to sickness during his childhood in all the worse ways possible, namely, going through all those diseases himself, Dante wasn’t taking chances.

Feeling like he had just completed the Olympic marathon for cleaning, he allowed himself to take a peek at the cryogenic pods. He pulled a data cord from the closest pod and plugged it in. Tapping quickly, the cryogenic pod’s data files were soon readily available at Dante’s fingertips. He picked number 29 “Alaena Badeau”, a strawberry blonde French female who was previously a medical officer, underneath chief medical officer Johnannes Checker aboard Elesanyes, a small but advanced ship. Her intelligence quotient was amongst the lowest of the 73, but still remained higher than the human’s finest.

Dante soon lost track of time and began absorbing himself within the world of the artificial gods, the room filled with a joint ambient noise of typing and electrical humming. He had gotten through the fifty one data files and had just opened the fifty second by the name of “Khan Singh” before a light chime resonating from his watch indicated that it was 1731 hours, nine minutes away from dinner meeting with Anna. She had little tolerance for tardiness and constantly expressed her dislike of Dante’s unfortunate penchant for losing track of time, he quickly deactivated the HoloCom’s connection and pulled out the plugs. Hurriedly, he made note of the components required to fix the replicator and flipped down the yellow and blue switches, causing the interface to the cryogenic pods to flicker out and ceasing the whirring of the replicator.

Dante rapidly repacked his navy blue bag and balanced his HoloCom on his arms whilst he stepped outside to lock the door. He knew his way around the Starfleet Headquarters, but there was little harm in double checking, he was late and didn’t want to take the wrong turn. After confirming his route, he moved to shut down the computer’s light blue screen, but just before he could tap the button a little gold green glimmer scampered across the screen disappearing at the thin edges of the HoloCom. Dante blinked a few times to check it wasn’t his eyesight, as the HoloCom was only a few weeks old meaning there was very little reason for the screen to be glitching up at such early stages. The glimmer didn’t appear again and the watch once again reminded Dante of his appointment. He glanced again at the screen before shrugging and tucking the HoloCom back in to his pack.

There was usually an explanation for everything odd, so Dante disliked dismissing happenings without resolving the issue. But between facing the wrath of Anna and a tiny glitch, he thought that he was most likely smarter to let go of a little screen bug.

Little did Dante know, for good or worse, this unfortunate mistimed ignorance will change his life forever.

*

It wasn’t the right time.

He knew well. Although eighteen thousand two hundred and fifty days of observation proved to be of little use at times, in these situations, he could run through doors of memories to pluck out a reason. But he came with close to nothing. There was no solid evidence as to why the two had appeared. Two was a strange number. One was all took to preserve the generator’s function. Five and a piece of machinery was for moving the cryopods. There was never only two.

It could meant many events. A team. An orientation. A research program. A new cryogenic plan. He couldn’t hear them yet but he could feel them. His pod trembled faintly to the movement of the screeching door and he heard a mutter of irritancy. He was expecting some sort of force to shift the pods as he had concluded in the previous seconds for it to be a preliminary preparatory team to shift the pod’s energy source. It was difficult to maintain and was only logical they would change it.

But all of a sudden he could sense a brush across his glass cover, no jarring shoves or pushes. A soft touch filled with wonder. A smile. He couldn’t help but feel it. Penetrating the frostiness of the pod, it was a spring following a long winter. Then it was gone. The touch had returned to its owner and his sensitive senses returned to the ears as it once again served its function filtering the new words coming through.

The button purposes. Colors. The NAD switches. Information that he already knew but could use confirmation. Then he heard it. The one phrase that he had been waiting years for, one phrase he could use to save his whole team.

“Do you know what you are doing?”

A scornful and skeptical tone was laced all over the sentence. Irritation and impatience hung on as well. Whoever had been addressed was new and untaught, a fresh employee most likely sent to work upon the cryopods. They were the key asset to the plan he had worked and re-worked years upon. The only missing piece that he as the predator had waited his time for.

His senses tingled as he observed their every move. A touch around the cryopod structure then a PADD whir appeared, suggesting a basic room functionality monitor. All should be functioning decently, save the replicator as the previous worker had accidentally slammed a power drill against the side of the replicator dislodging a piece he deduced was the focuser and the ventilation which was set on the lowest power setting possible by the first maintainer. They seemed to have missed the ventilation panel entirely judging by the footsteps and instead headed straight for the replicator and generator. Then some of the boxes were handled, after some moving, they seemed to have settle down to observe the room. Finally the ventilator was noticed and fixed, at last, they ceased reparation as there was no movement heard in past five minutes.

Not long after, the sound of wires shifting near his pods indicated the use of his cryopod’s data access. In order to learn about the pod’s victims, they need to connect the data cord to a device, be it PADD or computer. Meaning he too could delve into the device. This perhaps would be his only chance to communicate as it was possible they would just download the files and leave. Perchance they would stay; but he would take no chances. As soon as the connection was initiated, he let himself fall into the device.

A somewhat decent interface came to greet him, it was definitely better developed in comparison to the computer he had last entered five thousand four hundred and fifty one days ago. He had little access to the computer files, however he had just enough tools to get working. Now it was just the question of time, he swiftly began the creation of his new persona, his artificial intelligence. A gentle and sympathetic character with a hint of humor was generally a good starting option, additions or adjustments could be later made through his connection with the persona. As for the name, “Harrison” was the last person he had personified, he had never liked his name giver, but he could appreciate the smooth syllables that graced the name. He decided on “Baines”, an ironic word play of his supposed current condition. Despite increasing the risk of discovery, he used his real voice to play his character and used his iris colors to represent his vocal intensity.

An hour passed and eventually a nebula of gold, green and blue filled his workspace. Baines was kind and good-willed, keen to help and support in all ways possible. He was almost done, he just had to indiscreetly activate Baines to begin his work. But just before he could complete Baines’ integration, the connection was severed. Glowing windows outside his virtual workspace began to dim and turn off.

The computer was being shut down.

As nothing had triggered his senses before the abrupt stop of the connection, not only was Baines incomplete, he was also trapped out of his body, he couldn’t return to the cryopod without the connection. He needed to activate Baines before the computer was shut down to rest and the memory sweeper erasing Baines and his only possibility to revenge. The integration program connecting the A.I. and the computer was unfinished and lacked a leader. Despite running through over fifty different scenarios, it appeared there was no other option available other than to incorporate himself into the A.I.

He was running out of time.

It was extremely dangerous to attempt such maneuver especially in a weakened mental state. It would be a close call. Grabbing Baines into his arms, he shoved against the barriers of data between him and the computer mainframe. The glowing bright blue walls strained against his push, little cracks dancing up the plate. He heard the shattering before he broke through. A lurid snap rang through the virtual space. He was through and as soon as his thoughts settled enough, he scrambled straight to the nearest port, shoving Baines into the connection and plunging his hands in as well.

The nebula grew and expanded, a multitude of shades and color radiating brighter and brighter in sync with a pulsing warmth in his chest which was growing hotter, until the nebula burst. A wave of gold green tinged with blue spreaded around the virtual space, bathing him in calm colors. Then it died down, its colors now luminescent and soft. He felt ragged breaths coming out of his mouth and sat down by Baines, closing his virtual eyes.

It was too close. He hadn’t been so reckless in so many years. But he needed to do this no matter what cost to himself and now was his only chance.

He was Khan Singh.

And he would do anything to save his crew.

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Again, thank you and I hope you enjoyed it :)


End file.
